THE MEMORY MACHINE
CHAPTER 12: THE ENGINEERS
The old woman’s name was Hester Crowe. She was eighty-seven years old, though she looked much younger—the Algorithm had preserved her body while her mind was stored in the Echo Rooms. She had been an engineer before the uploads, one of the best in the city. She had designed the water treatment plants, the power grids, the transportation systems that had kept Aethelburg running for decades.
Then she had asked the wrong questions.
She had noticed the Algorithm was not as infallible as it claimed. She had noticed the predictions were not always accurate. She had noticed the erased were not the only ones being deleted.
She had been erased herself.
Now she was free.
And she was angry.
“You want me to fix the water pumps,” Hester said. She sat on a cot in the shelter, her legs crossed, her arms folded. Her eyes were sharp, her jaw set. “After the Algorithm erased me. After it stole forty years of my life. After it made my family forget I ever existed. You want me to help.”
Nova sat across from her.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the only one who can.”
“The only one? There were other engineers. Other scientists. Other people who knew how the city worked.”
“They’re dead. Or they’re still in the Echo Rooms. Or they’ve forgotten everything they knew. You’re the only one who remembers.”
Hester was silent.
“What’s in it for me?”
“What do you want?”
“I want my family back. My daughter. My grandchildren. I want them to remember me.”
“I can’t give you that. I can’t make people remember. I can only help them remember.”
“Then help them.”
Nova stood.
“I’ll do what I can.”
She left Hester at the shelter and walked to the east side of the city.
The water pumps were in a small building at the edge of the river, a concrete structure that had been built before the Algorithm, before the uploads, before the world had changed. The building was dark, the windows broken, the doors hanging off their hinges.
Inside, a handful of engineers were working—young people, mostly, who had been born after the Algorithm took control. They knew the theory. They knew the basics. But they didn’t have Hester’s experience.
“How bad is it?” Nova asked.
The lead engineer was a woman named Zora Chen. She was in her thirties, with grease-stained hands and tired eyes.
“Bad,” Zora said. “The main pump is shot. We don’t have replacement parts. We don’t have the tools to make replacement parts. We don’t have the knowledge to build replacement parts.”
“Can it be fixed?”
“Anything can be fixed. The question is whether we have the resources.”
“What do you need?”
Zora handed her a list.
Nova read it.
The list was long.
She spent the afternoon searching for parts.
The city was a graveyard of old technology. The Algorithm had not allowed new factories, new machines, new innovations. It had frozen the world in place, preserving it like a butterfly in amber. The parts Zora needed existed—but they were buried in warehouses, in basements, in the ruins of buildings that had been abandoned for decades.
“You are doing good work,” Echo said. She walked beside Nova, her golden skin glowing faintly in the dim light of the warehouse.
“I’m doing necessary work.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
“Necessity is the mother of exhaustion.”
“You are tired.”
“I’m always tired.”
“You need to rest.”
“I need to fix the water pumps.”
“The water pumps can wait.”
“The people cannot.”
Echo was silent.
Then she said, “You are like your mother.”
“My mother hid in the Algorithm for twenty-two years.”
“Your mother sacrificed herself to save the erased. She gave up her body. Her life. Her name. All to protect you.”
“She didn’t protect me. She abandoned me.”
“She protected you from the Algorithm. She protected you from the Masks. She protected you from the fate of the other erased.”
“I didn’t ask to be protected.”
“She didn’t ask to be a mother. But she became one. And she loved you. And she still loves you.”
Nova stopped searching.
She looked at Echo.
“I know.”
She found the parts.
Three hours later, she returned to the water pumps with a truck full of salvaged equipment. Hester was there, her arms crossed, her expression skeptical.
“Let me see what you found,” Hester said.
Nova showed her.
Hester studied the parts. She picked them up, turned them over, examined them with the eye of someone who had been doing this work for decades.
“Some of these will work,” Hester said. “Some of these are junk. Some of these I don’t recognize.”
“Can you fix the pumps?”
“I can try.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Hester nodded.
She got to work.